


doom days

by wonderwall_mp4



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/F, F/M, a lot of funky fresh female friendships!, and carol and tony r Bros, carol being a protective mom, carolmaria, gays, god i love them, moms!carolmaria, mostly canon with a lil sprinkle of au, was just supposed to be an angst drabble but turned out to just be carol experiencing endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 09:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18808015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwall_mp4/pseuds/wonderwall_mp4
Summary: "when i watch the world burn, all i think about is you."the endgame, from carol's perspective, and how she deals with losing her wife and daughter.





	doom days

**Author's Note:**

> title from doom days by bastille (a certified bussy bopper)
> 
> i got the idea for this and wrote it in like 3 days i hope yall enjoy :') happy mother's day to monica's space moms

Carol’s just following her routine, punching some aliens and saving the universe, like any other ordinary day, when something decidedly un-ordinary happens. When she goes to punch the next baddie, her glowing fist passes clean through his face and he disintegrates into particles that fly into her mouth and eyes.

“Shit!” she mutters, staggering backwards and batting dust out of her face. Was that a new power? Cool. When did that happen? She holds up her fists proudly to show another one of the aliens, when she realizes he’s disintegrating away too, when she isn’t even close to touching him. Uh oh. That can’t be good. All around her, at least half of the baddies that she had been fighting all start disappearing into thin air.

What was happening? Carol summons her power and blasts off, surveying the battlefield. The small town outside of where she was fighting is going up in chaos, and she feels a twinge of panic as she touches down on the main street. A little boy runs up to her, eyes wide and filled with fear, and she kneels to his level. “Kid, what’s going on?”

“Miss Marvel! Miss Marvel, help us,” he sobs.

Carol puts her hands on his shoulders. “Of course I’ll help, but you gotta tell me what’s wrong first.”

“My mom… she-” he makes a poofing motion with his hands, and suddenly starts to look sick. “I-” he stumbles, and Carol grabs him. “I don’t feel good.” The blonde hero, mind whirling, pulls the boy into her arms and cradles his head against her chest, and he begins to cry again as he dissolves. Soon, she's holding nothing. She stumbles back, wondering if she’s hallucinating.

Carol had stared death in the eyes before, but this… this is something else, on a massive scale. People all around her are dying, disappearing for some unknown reason. She needs to get back to Earth. She stands up and begins to get a running start when she feels something buzzing at her hip that makes her stop cold.

See, Nick Fury is a stubborn asshole. They have a bet going on how long he would be able to survive without Carol’s help. For him to page her, to admit defeat, means something of epic, universe-ending proportions is going on. Which means whatever is happening here is happening back on Earth.

A lot of thoughts go through her mind at that exact moment, but the first ones that stick are simply two names that send her rocketing skyward.

_Monica._

_Maria._

She flies faster than she ever has before, billions of light-years a second. She has to get back to Earth in time. She _has_ to. In under ten minutes she’s rocketing back into the upper atmosphere. That ten minutes is possibly the most terrifying in Carol’s life, and she's been in danger so many times before.

She explodes with so much force down to the ground that she leaves a crater in the yard the size of Maria’s plane.

Carol whips her helmet off and her suit begins to melt into her watch, replaced with her normal attire of jeans and her flight jacket. She runs up the porch steps and kicks down the door. If this all ended up okay, she was going to get so much shit from her wife later. “Maria! Monica?” she calls frantically. The house is deadly silent, too silent. She runs into the kitchen, searching for dust, or any signs of a struggle.

“Carol!” she whirls to see Maria, standing there in the doorway of the back porch, wearing her patched-up, dusty gardening overalls, an expression equal parts surprise and joy on her beautiful face. “When did you get-” she’s interrupted by Carol running to her and wrapping her up in her embrace.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” breathes Carol into her shoulder. She pulls back and kisses her forehead in relief.

Maria puts a hand on Carol’s chest and gives her a gentle push, eyebrows knitting in concern. “As happy as I am to see you, Carol, you look worried. What’s wrong?”

“Fury paged me. Something bad is going on, people are disintegrating-” she waves a hand. “-it’s a whole thing. I wanted to check on you and the kiddo and make sure you both were okay.”

“People are WHAT?!”

“But it’s fine! It’s fine we have it all under control. No need to worry.” Carol flashes her a hesitant grin and Maria raises an eyebrow, unconvinced.

“So you didn’t come to finish your chores? The lawn needs to be mowed-”

“Ah!” Carol yelps suddenly. “Well, I should probably... go check on Fury! Yes, important superhero business to attend to!” she begins to awkwardly moonwalk out of the kitchen. Maria grins, rolling her eyes, and tugs her back by lapels of her jacket.

“You’re not getting away from me that easily,” Maria joked. “The laundry happens to be clean, and there are lots of weeds left in the garden…”

“Noooooooo,” Carol whines, and Maria laughs loudly, the sound like music to Carol’s ears. Carol is so glad that Maria is safe that even chores sound okay to her, as long as she’s doing them with her wife by her side. She decides right there that if everything turns out okay, she's going to stick around for a while.

Suddenly Maria’s expression changes, like she’s suddenly been hit with a wave of pain or nausea. “What is it?” Carol asks. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine, just-” Maria touches her head, confused. “Just a little-” her knees give way and she stumbles to the floor, wincing in sudden agony. Carol scrambles to hold her up, flashing back to the little boy on that planet. She has the terrifying feeling that her wife is about to meet the same fate.

She cradles Maria in her arms, holding her close. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” she whispers. “I thought you were fine. You were going to be fine,” she says helplessly. Carol still has her powers, but in this moment, she’s never felt so powerless, not even when her powers had been taken away from her.

“So it’s happening to me.” It isn’t a question. “Carol, Monica’s not here. Find her. Make sure she’s okay,” Maria says urgently. Her legs start to disintegrate.

“I will,” promises Carol. “You’ll both be okay. I’m going to get you back.” She cups her wife’s cheek, and Maria holds her hand against Carol’s, leaning into her touch. Carol tries to stay calm for her, and she can see in Maria’s eyes that she’s trying to do the same.

“You… better…” murmurs Maria, and she disappears into dust.

Carol falls back on her heels, numb, mind spinning. Her wife is gone, possibly dead, her daughter is missing, and she doesn’t have a damn idea what is going on. All she knows is that someone was responsible for this, so someone would pay.

She needs to find Fury.

︽✵︽

Two hours later, after finding out Fury died in whatever the hell is going on, Carol forces herself through the chaos on the streets and makes a scene in the Avengers lobby until someone recognizes her and lets her in. When she gets access to the database of all the people being reported as missing across the world, her eyes almost physically reject what she sees: Monica Rambeau-Danvers, aged 21, disappeared while out with friends.

Carol skips denial, goes straight to anger, and doesn’t budge. No, anger isn’t the right word. It was rage, pure rage, ice-cold and red-hot at the same time. After telling her what had happened, the Avengers, the world’s most powerful heroes, all back up a few paces as Carol stalks around the control room, muttering about the ways she’s going to murder Thanos with her bare hands. She does this for about 20 minutes while the Avengers discuss what they're going to do with her. In the end, the big blond guy named Thor is elected to shake her out of her daze and show her to her room.

“You’ve lost someone, obviously,” says Thor as they’re walking, after a while of silence. Carol nods quietly. “I understand. My brother perished by Thanos’s hand. He was the only family I had left.”

Carol feels a twinge of empathy for Thor. She can feel a spark of solidarity between the two of them, a little connection saying _you aren’t alone_. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s fine. The little shit had it coming.” He lets out a wry chuckle. “So, who are you fighting for?”

Carol likes the way he says this. Because they weren’t really gone, and now they were fighting to bring them back. “My wife, Maria, and daughter, Monica.”

“Your daughter is the girl you were looking at on the screen?” Carol nods pensively. “She seems like a fine young woman. You must be very proud of her.” The two of them step into an elevator and Thor presses the button for the 17th floor.

“She was in college to be a flight engineer, her second year.” Carol smiles sadly. “She was being scouted to go into the Air Force. Her mother and I met in the Air Force, you know. We were in the same flight.” She squeezes her eyes shut, embarrassed of the tears threatening to escape. “Before Fury paged me, I had been gone for at least six months. I missed them so much. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Monica, and Maria, my wife-” she makes a vague gesture with her hand, “-dusted in my arms. I promised her I’d keep Monica safe, but how can I do that if she’s gone too?” She sniffles. “I’m sorry. You must think this is so dumb. I’m normally not this emotional.”

The ding of the elevator startles her out of her thoughts, and when the two of them step out, Thor claps a broad hand on her shoulder. “Carol, please don’t apologize for showing how you feel. We have all lost much,” he says seriously. “We all want them back. You are not alone in that. So you have an entire team behind you that will rip apart the universe to find your family, and theirs. In the meantime, how would you like us to be your family?”

Carol has the feeling she’s just made a friend, or maybe a few. She smiles up at him. “Thanks, Thor. I’d like that.” They start walking towards the end of the hall. “Thor… like the Norse god of lightning, right?”

“More like him than you’d think, my friend,” Thor guffaws.

︽✵︽

“Do we know who she is?” Pepper ask Bruce and Nat. They both shrug.

“She’s Captain Marvel,” Cap pipes up. When all he receives are blank stares, he elaborates, “The woman that the Fury based the Avengers Initiative on?”

They all let out a collective “ohhhhhh”. With this revelation, none of them even bring up whether she should be on the team or not. And this was when Carol Danvers became an Avenger.

︽✵︽

After Carol cleans up and calms down, she joins the Avengers in the control room. They give her a full briefing, and seeing how distraught Pepper is at the sound of Tony’s name, she promises she’ll try her best to save whoever was stranded on that ship during the snap. It ends up being Iron Man and an angry cyborg-alien named Nebula. She is glad she can be of use to someone, but feels a jealous little twinge in her gut when she watches Pepper and Tony happily reunite.

Tony rehabilitates. The Avengers hatch a plot to find Thanos. Carol brightens with glee (literally, her whole body starts to glow) when they tell her she’ll be the one to knock that grape-face motherfucker on his backside, but saddens a little when she’s told she has to keep him alive. She wants to disobey orders like she always does, but she’s the newbie and they’ve been so kind to her, and she couldn’t stand to be too reckless and mess up their plan.

They find Thanos. Carol does what she’s told, and brilliantly so, if she might say so herself. They find out he made the Infinity Stones destroy themselves, and therefore, there is no way to get the disappeared people back.

Carol feels like she’s just watched Maria die again.

Thor cuts his head off in anger. Carol is devastated she doesn’t get to do it herself, but is happy that her friend is able to avenge his brother.

︽✵︽

Five terrible years go by.

Carol busies herself with helping people on other planets, occasionally reporting back to Earth.

She bonds with Nat over hours and hours of holographic communication. Carol admires how calm and intelligent the spy is, and Nat admires Carol’s drive and perseverance. When Carol is on Earth, they spar often, training and making each other better, and they grow as close as sisters.

Sometimes Bruce calls her in to study her powers, and sometimes they get tacos and discuss what they’ve been through. Carol loves tacos. At first just an excuse for the scientist to learn more about her abilities, it soon becomes a ritual and morphs into genuine conversation.

Tony can always be counted on to exchange fatalistic, snarky remarks, and he finds a kindred spirit in Carol, who also resorts to sarcasm as a coping mechanism. After a year or so, Pepper announces she’s pregnant and she and Tony move out of New York. Carol shakes his hand before he leaves, and he tells her that she’s “pretty cool, or whatever”. Pepper whispers to her afterwards, “he thinks you’re amazing.” Carol doesn’t stop smiling for an hour.

Cap is often out on his own do-gooding missions, but he’s never too busy to give Carol a hello and a kind word of advice.

Thor moves, starts a city he names New Asgard, and sinks into a sort of depression. Carol sometimes visits him to rouse him and take him to Chipotle or Jamba Juice, just so he can have something a little healthier than TV dinners. Even though he’s drunk half the time, she enjoys their conversations. His lieutenant, a pretty girl named Brunnhilde, known as Valkyrie, also becomes Carol’s close friend. When Carol comes to visit Thor, she always takes some time to visit her and help her with her jobs, since she’s basically running Asgard while Thor isn’t feeling good. Carol sees Val as her confidante, and Val never stops finding jobs for her to attend to so Carol has an excuse to stick around and talk, which they end up doing for hours anyway.

Nebula, the blue cyborg alien Carol saved, is prickly and dangerous. From what Carol can gather, she’s Thanos’s adoptive daughter, but Carol doesn’t hold it against her because she knows Thanos killed her sister and nearly killed her. They mostly stay out of each other’s way, but Carol knows she’d have her back in a fight, and that’s a solid bond.

Carol misses her wife and daughter every single day. When the pain grows to be too much to bear, she cuts her hair a little bit, seeing it as a physical way to purge. Soon, her shoulder-length hair is to her ears, then it’s a fluffy pixie and she can’t cut it any shorter. She longs to have Maria tease her about how much of a lesbian stereotype she is, but whisper to her later about how cute it looks on her. She wants Monica to leap up to ruffle it, so she can get fake-mad and chase her around the kitchen, Carol growling and Monica squealing until they fall to the floor in fits of laughter while Maria watches fondly from the doorway. Carol knows she should move on, but she just can’t. She still wants all that life back.

Maybe there is a God, and maybe He’s merciful, and maybe He listens sometimes, because one day, everything changes.

One day, the one _damn_ day Carol happens to be stranded on a distant planet, unable to help, Scott Lang, the ant dude, appears from the ether and basically proves the existence of time travel. Carol always misses all the good stuff.

Nat messages her to tell her the plan. Carol nearly cries when she sees the Avengers back together, ready to tear the world apart, and all she can do is sit and hope until the barrier around the planet comes down. After a little while, a time that feels excruciatingly long, Tony informs her via the comm box that Bruce took the gauntlet and brought everyone back, and Carol sees people reappearing all around her on the barricaded planet. It kills her to be gone, to not be able to help, and she prays that she’ll be able to help soon. Carol wonders why Tony messages her instead of Nat. Maybe she’s busy?

When she finally arrives on Earth a few days later, as soon as she can, to help, and realizes that Thanos is _right fucking there_ , she goes supernova out of pure rage and punches a hole through a spaceship in her quest to get to Alterna-Thanos and kill him so fast he doesn’t know he’s dead until his head hits the ground. _This is for Maria. This is for Monica. This is for Thor and Nat and Val and Bruce and Tony and Cap and Pepper. For my family, and my extended family._

She fights Thanos. She comes so close to killing him, _so_ close, but in the end, he has the Power Stone, she gets three broken ribs and she fails. She’s beaten, but she feels a spark of hope through her pain when she realizes if the Avengers are coming back, then Maria and Monica must be back too.

She helps the kid, Peter, take the gauntlet across the battlefield, and in his battered and bruised face she sees a younger Monica: hopeful, eager to please, happy to be part of the team. The women of the Avengers surround Carol and the boy she’s silently sworn to protect, and she feels powerful again with her family at her side.

And Tony, snarky Tony, the man she’d saved, the sad, genius billionaire inventor that she’d befriended, the father, the leader, who had never stopped sacrificing himself for the team, sacrifices himself one last time. Carol watches silently from the sidelines as Pepper tells him to rest, and his head lolls to the side. Peter sobs as the man who acted as a father to him dies to save the world, and Carol stays quiet and stays back for once in her life.

︽✵︽

The day after the battle, Carol is tired. The kind of tired that seeps down into your bones, a kind of tired that seems permanent. She’s swirling the dregs of beer in the bottom of her cup, staring numbly into nothingness, when a knock on the door frame makes her glance up. It’s Pepper. She has a cut down the side of her face, her leg is wrapped in bloody bandages, she’s covered in dirt, and she looks about as exhausted as Carol feels. Carol stands up and walks toward the taller woman, and she falls into Carol’s arms. It’s the first and only time Carol ever sees Pepper cry.

Carol finds out Nat is gone. She doesn’t want to relive that memory. She’s not even sure she can.

Thanos is defeated. The world has been destroyed and put back together. In all the chaos in the days following, Carol can’t find even a free five minutes to visit her wife and daughter. She works hard, organizing refugees, flying people back to their families and helping Pepper plan Tony’s funeral. They’re the only people close to him that can think about him without breaking down in tears: Carol because she’s naturally stoic, and Pepper because she’s numb.

Despite being busy with her own things, Valkyrie drops by often. Carol talks to Valkyrie a lot. She’s really the only person Carol talks to, so she’s the one who gets to hear all about Maria and Monica. Val seems to enjoy these stories. Carol finds out pretty soon that Val has been named Queen of Asgard, and jokingly calls her Queenie once. She finds out she shouldn’t call Val that unless she wants a spear pointed at her throat.

One day, about a month after the end of the world, Carol is going about her business, taking a selfie with some kids in the Avengers lobby on her three-minute break, when Pepper calls her outside. She goes to the landing strip, where Val and Pepper are waiting. It's a beautiful day outside. Carol can't remember the last time she's just stood outside like this and taken a pause.

“What’s this?” she asks the two women. Pepper simply nods at the sky, and Val leans on her spear, smiling knowingly. Carol looks up. Breaking through the cloud line is one of Tony’s high-tech sonic planes.

“Happy birthday, Carol,” says Valkyrie. Carol blinks in surprise, but, sure enough, her watch tells her it’s May 12th.

When the plane lands, the hull opens, and out walks Maria, trailed closely by Monica. Carol’s breath catches. Has her wife grown more beautiful since she’s last seen her? Carol feels like she hasn’t seen her family in an eternity, and now they’re standing here, right in front of her.

Carol starts to run before she even realizes what she’s doing and crashes into them, and she’s home at last. They both hug her, and Maria pulls Carol into a kiss while Monica makes gagging noises behind them.

“Missed you,” whispers Maria in Carol’s ear, and Carol feels her heart light up.

Carol picks Monica up and spins her around like she used to do when she was little. “Lieutenant Trouble! Long time, no see!” says Carol, setting her down and tousling her hair. “How was being dead?” Maria punches Carol in the arm. “Ah! Sorry, too soon?”

“Hey, Mom, is this enough of a lesson?” Monica jokes. “Are you gonna visit us more than twice a year now?” She raises an eyebrow. “Or is fighting aliens more important than your family?”

“Ooh, ouch!” Carol clutches her chest, pretending to be hurt. “You wound me so, daughter!”

Monica howls with laughter and pulls her moms into another tight hug. "It's okay. I forgive you."

As the little family reunites, Valkyrie and Pepper stand at the front of the landing strip, watching them. Pepper holds out her hand, and Valkyrie gives her a high five. All is well, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter for me being a dummy ass, jokes about death, and writing content @eveningstqr


End file.
